Lecture 12:
Slavery
This issue, foreshadowed in past lectures, is the one that
drives the content of the course hereafter.
Here we go back to colonial times to deal with the origins, decline,
and tragic resurgence of human slavery in America. Then we trace the rise of this issue as a
sectional controversy through 1850, when one more great compromise offered
brief promise for preservation of the Union.
Outline of Lecture
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Introduction
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For a long time historians were reluctant to deal with
slavery as the central issue at state in the Civil War, or race as a
central issue in American society.
Historians cannot shrink from such moral issues, but they also need
to seek empathy with the historical figures of the past in order to
understand what happened.
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Slavery
Entrenched in the South
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Slavery, established in colonial times, seemed to be
withering away in the early years of the republic. It came back, though, with the rise of
the Cotton Kingdom in the South. The so-called peculiar institution not
only became ingrained into southern life but also acquired the protection of
law.
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Thinking About
Slavery
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Slavery was a difficult issue for early Americans to
approach, first because given their values, they
could not see how to solve the problems of economic and race that would
accompany emancipation. Moreover,
discussion of the issue was radicalized, southerners voicing intractable
arguments in favor of slavery, northerners condemning them just as loudly.
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Uneasy
Compromise
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Slavery was entrenched, but it was vulnerable in certain
aspects: slavery in DC, and the handling
of fugitive slaves. The main focus
of controversy, however, was the possibility of slavery extended into the
western territories. This was an
explosive issue, involving several states and territories, apparently
settled by the Compromise of 1850.
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Assignments
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Tocqueville
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Chapter 9: “Liberty
of the Press in the United
States.”
In the lecture on slavery we encounter a peculiar example of reform
journalism—the abolitionist press.
By reading Tocqueville's remarks on the
press in general, you will come to see how remarkable the abolitionist
press was.
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Journalists sometimes do irresponsible things and
print things they shouldn't. (Many
southerners said this was the case with the abolitionist press.) According to Tocqueville, is there any
way to regulate this sort of behavior?
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With so many newspapers, why wasn't the press in Tocqueville's America powerful and dangerous?
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Many people today are concerned with the abuse of
free speech on the Internet. Can you
apply Tocqueville's observations to this later
situation?
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WWW
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Slavery and the Old South remain shrouded in clouds of
romance. For instance, Gone with
the Wind is now out in cheap video and DVD. Take a look around the GWTW Webring,
with its more than eighty fan sites, and consider how this phenomenon of
popular culture may affect our images of history.
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HIST 103 Home Page
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